


Misplaced Hero

by Mokulule



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Fate Worse Than Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Post-Apocalypse, Sensory Deprivation, Trigger warning: claustrofobia, eventually, fenton family feels, it does get better though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mokulule/pseuds/Mokulule
Summary: They ran, following the green splotches of ectoplasm. Sam almost couldn’t breathe, the pressure in her chest overwhelming. But she forcefully moved on following the glowing trail. That was the good part about ectoplasm she thought hysterically, even if her eyes blurred she could still see that glow - The glow from Danny’s blood.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jack Fenton, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Danny Fenton & Maddie Fenton
Comments: 15
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

  
They ran, following the green splotches of ectoplasm. Sam almost couldn’t breathe, the pressure in her chest overwhelming. But she forcefully moved on following the glowing trail. That was the good part about ectoplasm she thought hysterically, even if her eyes blurred she could still see that glow - The glow from Danny’s blood.

She forced down a choked sob.

Beside her Tucker wasn’t doing much better and Jazz… She was completely out of it. Running ahead with her longer stride.

_Where are you Danny?_

There had been a ghost attack, but this ghost had been different. Nothing but a monster; huge, all snarls and teeth. There hadn’t been a recognizable animal it was derived from. It should have come as no surprise to them that it was something Plasmius had cooked up in his lab. He’d lost control of it of course and Danny had to be the one dealing with it. They’d found out too late it was practically immune to Danny’s ectoblasts, it had swiped him out of the sky.

Danny had been hurt before. He’d had scrapes, his suit had been torn, he’d pushed himself to severe exhaustion, it had never been anything a little rest hadn’t fixed and he’d always been fine in the end. 

But this, the blood, it had never happened before. _You better be okay_ , she thought. She didn’t know what she’d do if he wasn’t.

Jazz turned a corner ahead of them and screamed.

Urgency and fear pushed Sam and Tucker around the corner. Sam froze in horror. Jazz had fallen to her knees her hands desperately trying to push a large pool of ectoplasm together. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The green soaked into her pants.

No.

It couldn’t be.

“The trail ends here,” Tucker said in a small voice. His lower lip wobbled and he covered his mouth with a hand.

Sam looked from Jazz, to Tucker, to the pool of green ooze that could not be Danny, it could not.

“No!” She yelled voice breaking. There had to be some kind of explanation. No way Danny was…

“Sam, the trail ends.” He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “Where else could he have gone?” 

Desperately she glanced around frantic to catch another glance of that sickly glowing green. She stepped forward. There was nothing. No splatters on the walls of the buildings. No sign Danny had flown away.

She looked at the pile of ectoplasm. Jazz had given up on trying to stop it from spreading further and she was just sobbing quietly. Sam felt nauseous. She rubbed her eyes angrily when they blurred. Angrily she turned around and took a few steps away. There was a hollow sounding thump of her boot hitting the ground. She looked down. She’d stepped on a manhole cover… She stared uncomprehendingly through blurry vision, then her eyes widened. At first she didn’t even understand what her brain was telling her, could only feel the leap of hope in her heart.

The sewers!

She spun around. Looking at the pool of ectoplasm, he couldn’t have flown away, but he could have phased down.

“Tucker help me!” She yelled, bending down and grabbing a hold of the edge of the metal cover. 

“Sam, what are you-” Tucker sniffled, but still came over. “The sewer?” He asked in surprise.

She looked up and met his eyes with a wild hope in her own. “He must have phased down, give me a hand.”

Tucker grimaced but wiped his face and helped her tug the heavy cover off. The stench was atrocious.

“What are you doing?” A hoarse voice asked them.

They looked up to see Jazz standing there, eyes red and puffy. Ectoplasm was smeared across her cheeks and glowed from her hair where she’d tugged on it. Her hands were still covered in it.

“Danny has to have phased down, it’s the only explanation.” It was the only explanation Sam would accept. She expected Jazz to balk at the sewer, but she just grit her teeth.

“Let’s find my brother.”

Sam nodded. They didn’t normally get along very well, but this they could agree on.

-

They didn’t find Danny. 

They searched and called, but eventually they were all too exhausted, covered in unspeakable grime, they emerged from the sewer blocks away from where they’d entered. 

Sam’s leg gave out on her and she fell back against the nearest wall. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t even wipe them away, with her hands so dirty. Stupid Danny, why did he have to play the hero? Why had she encouraged him to do that?

She leaned her head against the wall. Above her head the stars Danny so loved glittered like nothing had changed. As if her best friend wasn’t gone. 

  
Oo o oO

Sam was crying. Jazz had never seen her cry. It was that more than anything that made the knowledge settle in her gut like a cold block of ice. Danny was truly gone. For a moment they’d had hope. For one glorious moment Jazz had believed Danny had escaped, but he hadn’t.

Her baby brother had died. 

His ghostly form had disintegrated into so much mush like the low level ghosts she’d whipped to oblivion. A splatter of glowing ectoplasm on the ground, he’d ceased to exist, scared and alone in some random alleyway unable to keep himself together. There was no body to bring home. 

Absently she noted Tucker go to Sam, tears cleared tracks down his dirty cheeks too. They must all look terrible. She looked at her dirty hands. Her breath hitched at the green specks of ectoplasm under her nails. She turned around and walked away.

Her steps were loud in the silent night. The streets were empty. They’d been in the sewers for hours. A silent news spot rolled by on a large screen on a building up ahead only to be replaced by another Vlad Masters reelection commercial. It took a while for her to even comprehend what she’d read on the screen. The monster had been defeated by her parents just recently. That explained the lack of screams in the night, she supposed.

Her parents… what was she even going to tell them?

She stood in front of the door to her home. She didn’t even know how she’d gotten there. Shaking her head, she stepped forward. The door gave way, it was unlocked. The moment she came inside she heard her father’s boisterous voice lifted in cheery celebration. Her stomach turned queasily and she ran to the sink. She threw up into the stainless steel sink, and rested her forehead on the cool tap. Her breaths were ragged and she closed her eyes trying to get them under control. The sour stench of puke, made her stomach turn once more. With a disgusted grimace she stood back up straight and ran the water. For a moment it worked but then it stopped; of course she’d clogged the sink with puke. She dry sobbed. Just another thing to add to this horrible day. 

She had to tell them. 

Unsteadily she walked down the stairs, hand on the wall for support. Her mom was excitedly gushing about how this capture could advance their research exponentially, his father’s loud agreements reverberated up through the stairwell. Jazz stepped into the lab.

Expectedly her mom was holding a thermos aloft while her dad posed with a fist raised in victory.

“Mom, Dad,” she interrupted their manic ranting.

Her mom was the first to react, not that emotion could properly be discerned behind the goggles, but her voice at least showed proper worry.

“Jazz dear, you look terrible, what happened?”

Tears welled up in Jazz’ eyes, and here she’d thought she didn’t have anymore more tears. She opened her mouth but her throat was too tight to allow her to say anything.

“Jazzie,” her dad’s arms fell and he stepped towards her arms held out. 

The dam broke and she ran into her father’s arms, he quickly enveloped her in his large arms.

“It’s Danny, he-” she sobbed into the soft orange jumpsuit, “he’s gone. The monster, it got him.”

There was a loud clang. Jazz’ head snapped up in fright. Her mom had just dropped the thermos, it rolled under a lab table, unimportant now. Her mom’s previously so animated form stood shocked with her arms limply at her sides.

There was a moment of shocked silence, then all hell broke loose. 

Her mom and dad got into gear collecting all types of things. She hardly listened to what they were saying. No matter how they looked they wouldn’t find him, there was no body to find and they’d hardly look for Danny’s DNA in a splatter of ectoplasm. 

Oo o oO

Danny couldn’t see straight. The slash against his side burned and he was bleeding so, so much. He shuddered. Clenching his teeth he fought the transformation that would turn him back into a human. He couldn’t let that happen. With how deep that slash was, he would return to human with his guts spilling out. He would be dead in moments. His whole body trembled trying to keep himself together. Maybe it was a moot point anyway with the way he was leaking ectoplasm. It leaked through his fingers, impacted the ground in wet drips, marked his path like morbid breadcrumbs. 

He hit something with a groan, felt coarse brick against his cheek. He didn’t know when he’d closed his eyes. Blindly he pushed himself around the corner of the building. Blinking he saw the ground. He was rapidly loosing height now. He couldn’t quite find it in himself to care. Nothing mattered but the screaming pain in his side. The ground flew up and knocked the air from his chest, or that’s what it felt like. In reality some part of him knew he’d fallen. He was lying in something wet now. He forced his eyes open again, they kept closing. Glowing green blood spread around him in a puddle. How much could his ghostly body contain he wondered almost hysterically. 

Another tremble shook it’s way through him from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. His body fought to return to human. Desperately he grit his teeth tasting iron and pineapple, and why did ectoplasm even taste of pineapple? His mind grabbed the awful tangent like a life line, a focus point other than pain. 

He was shaking now. A continuous fine tremble. It was tearing him apart molecule by molecule, he huffed breathlessly at the thought - molecule by molecule. He curled in on himself as if that could possibly keep his body from disintegrating. He couldn’t even scream, even though the pain built in his throat, too afraid to release any of the waning ghostly energy. 

There was the sound of running feet. Desperate hope made him look up. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, anyone?! A harsh light blinded him, he quickly averted his eyes and blinked the tears away.

“Look Maddie, it’s the ghost kid!” His Father’s cheerfully merciless voice struck Danny cold. “He’s not getting away this time!”

No please anyone but…

Desperately he looked up, squinting against the glare, but saw only two very familiar silhouettes. He tried to get up, pushed away from the ground with the arm that wasn’t trying to hold back the flow of ectoplasm. He willed his body to float, to become intangible, anything!

The screech of a weapon charging sent every nerve in his body ablaze with fear.

“No wait, please!” He rasped, but it only turned into a cough and he spat more ectoplasm on the ground. Tiny speckles of red in the green glittered in the harsh light. Everything felt distant, echoey. 

There was a click.

He expected it to be over now. He could not dodge. His parents would succeed in killing him, like they’d threatened so many times. But he didn’t die. Instead suddenly a terribly familar tug pulled at the center of his being, it plucked him off the ground. No no no. He was too weak to fight it. Anything but this! He was squeezed together from all sides. He couldn’t feel his nose from his elbow, couldn’t tell his head from his toes. He felt his stomach roiling somewhere indefinable. The pain was still there, sharp and raw compressed into a point. 

But worse than this, worse than being trapped, his parents had finally gotten their wish; They had Phantom. And any moment now they could dump him out on a lab table and deliberately tear him apart molecule by molecule. He was hardly staying together as it was. It would be _easy_.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. It built in his chest, but there was no relief. He was trapped, forced into too small a space. He couldn’t do anything. His mind reeled. Terror consumed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize beforehand, this gets pretty dark.

**Chapter 2**

_It didn’t hurt anymore. He didn’t really feel his body anymore. He drifted. When he was aware he tried to come up with what to say once his parents let him out. How was he going to convince them not to cut him into little pieces? If he changed back, would they even believe he was himself? Or would they just think he was some kind of shapeshifter? He didn’t think his heart could take them looking at him with eyes devoid of compassion, like they’d surely done back in the alley, but this time he’d actually be able to see those eyes, well not his mom’s. There wasn’t any way she’d take her goggles off in front of a ghost._

_How long had it been now?_

Oo o oO

Danny was gone. Maddie couldn’t believe it. Her little bright boy, whose eyes looked to the sky in wonder. No trace of him anywhere.No body, despite Jazz’ surety Danny had been killled by the monster ghost, dubbed Ghostzilla by the media. Humans didn’t just disappear like that. They’d released Ghostzilla into a containment field and cut it open, thinking maybe the ghost could have eaten Danny, but upon the ghost’s disintegration there had been nothing.

Now a month later she sat down at a table in her lab, Jack was still out looking, he would never give up. She wondered when that fundamental truth would fracture as well. Nobody could go on forever. She rested her head in her hands, grabbed her tangled hair and tugged. It was greasy, she didn’t know when she’d last taken a shower.

Her foot struck something that rolled and with a frown she leaned to the side and looked underneath the table. Her eyes widened in realisation and she bent down and picked up the thermos. This was the thermos they’d finally captured Phantom in. She turned it around in her hands, noting the container being nearly full despite just the single ghostly occupant - it really was a level 7 entity wasn’t it? She noticed the absolute lack of passion in her thoughts, remembered the elation she’d felt as if from a distance, they’d been about to embark on a brand new journey of scientific discovery, but then Jazz had come down. Their entire world had shattered.

What did science matter, when Danny was gone.

She stood up and walked over to a nearby shelf. With a sigh she set the thermos down. Maybe one day, but right now she could not see a time where she could enjoy anything anymore. If only they’d been more attentive parents. If they hadn’t been busy hunting ghosts this would never have happened.

Oo o oO

_Maybe he should beg? No, begging hadn’t helped, he’d already tried? How could he explain to them he wasn’t an evil ghost? They didn’t believe ghosts to be anything but evil! They didn’t even believe ghosts were sentient in the first place. They thought ghosts were just things, electric imprints of consciousness in ectoplasm, but what are human consciousness but electric patterns themselves?_

_His nose itched. He didn’t know how but it did._

Oo o oO

Danny, little Danno boy, he couldn’t find him. He’d searched and searched, and still none. He’d promised Mads… He’d promised himself.

Jack growled and threw the empty bottle at the portal. He swayed on his feet. This was all because of their sick ghost obsession, if they’d never built the cursed portal this would have never happened. He sat down heavily in his chair, burrying his face in his hair. To think he’d considered that portal his greatest achievement - his pride and joy, but with Danny gone it was so apparent the portal was just a thing: A dangerous thing in their basement, bringing ghosts into this world. Ghosts who had taken Danny from them.

He looked up, his eyes fell on a wrench. With a dark anger curling in his chest he picket it up and staggered over to the portal. Without the framework he and Maddie had put into place to support it the portal would act just like a natural portal, meaning that it would close by itself. Jack eyed the swirling green doorway through narrowed eyes. He swayed a bit on the spot, the metal of the wrench warming in his hand, its heft a familiar comfort.

He could just disassemble it. He raised his hand high above his head, muscles bulging against his jumpsuit. But disassembling it would not sate the rage of the father. He brought the wrench down. It impacted the portal with a loud clang and a screech of tearing metal. Sparks flew through the air, and a small part of Jack’s brain, a part he rarely used and certainly wasn’t about to listen to now, acknowledged that he should have turned the electricity off first. In his alcohol fuelled rage it didn’t matter. He brought the wrench down again and again on the metal frame, until his arms hurt and then he continued some more.

The wrench struck a cable and there was a great big punch up his arm and he was thrown across the room into a shelf. Something fell down and struck him on the head. Dazed and weak Jack grabbed for the thing as it rolled down his chest. His fingertips touched the thing as he fell to the side and it rolled further from him. There was a pain in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. His left cheek laid against the cold floor. He blinked trying to focus on the thing.

It was a thermos; Phantom’s thermos.

Anger put a haze in front of his eyes, or was that the pain in his chest? He struggled to move forward. He would chuck the cursed thing back into the zone where it came from. He just had to reach it before the broken portal closed.

His fingertips were just an inch from the thermos when his body gave up.

Oo o oO

_Maybe they would not want to experiment on him at all? Maybe they’d discovered he was missing, maybe they had figured it out and he wouldn’t even have to explain anything._

_Maybe…_

Oo o oO

Tucker held his breath hoping Mr and Mrs Fenton wouldn’t be right on the other side of the door as he slowly turned the key. They probably didn’t even know he had this key. The lock clicked and he waited two seconds before pushing the door inwards. It creaked of course, and he grimaced; funny how he’d never noticed that while Danny- He dispelled the thought, now wasn’t the time to think of his best friend or the way he still looked to the spot in between himself and Sam expecting him to be there… He took a deep breath and slowly let it out though his nose. Biting his lip he stuck his head inside and looked around, if the door hadn’t attracted attention maybe he could still skedaddle with no explanation should there be anyone in the living room or nearby kitchen; there wasn’t. With a sigh of relief he entered the house.

He walked through clutter and past empty pizza boxes and he felt a slow niggle of alarm.Never had he seen the Fenton living room being anything but pristine, except right in the aftermath of an invention gone wrong. The dark didn’t help, but he didn’t dare hit the lights lest he draw attention to himself. His foot hit something and he froze as it rolled into the light; a beer bottle.

He rubbed his forehead. Great, just great… Of course there was a reason the Fentons wasn’t out there ghost hunting anymore. It was understandable, but it made things hard for Sam and him.

They needed to empty some ghosts back in the zone and maybe nab some heavier hitters if possible. Sam had gotten hurt in the last ghost attack, not seriously, but who knew about next time. Tucker wouldn’t stand by and loose another friend. But who knew if they even had any working ghost tech in the lab? With the state of the living room Tucker was in sudden doubt. Maybe if he could find some blueprints he could try building some weapons himself.

The doorway to the basement loomed wide and dark like a maw into the abyss. There was a strange crackling sound coming from down there. Tucker frowned, halted in hesitation. Something was in the air. He took a deep sniff and his eyes widened in horror; smoke. Quickly he ran down the stairs. A thick layer of smoke hung up under ceiling. The portal or rather where the portal should have been was on fire! On the floor a large unmistakeable orange shape laid too still: Mr Fenton.

Tucker strugggled for breath, not from the smoke but from sheer panic. His voice was only a tiny squeak as he tried to call out, like someone was holding him by the throat. He coughed and tried again.

“Help,” he whispered, he turned around, felt the scream build in his chest as his mind slowly caught up to what he’d seen.

“HELP!” He screamed, again and again and he wasn’t quite sure how many times or what happened. It was all a blur. Some people had taken Mr Fenton away. The fire was out, only the smell and the smoke still hung in the air. He looked down at his shaking hands and clenched them. They felt weak, like he couldn’t even lift a cup right now. He was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. The laces on his right shoe had come undone at some point. Maybe he should do something about that, maybe…

He looked up. Mrs Fenton stood in the center of the lab, her orange hair wild like the flames that had been put out. She stood right where her husband had been found. In her left hand was a thermos. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to murder something, brows drawn down in dark consideration as her thumb hovered over the square button.

Finally after what felt like an eternity her shoulders fell and she moved over to some shelves and set it down. She turned and walked over to Tucker. She stopped two feet from his shoes and he slowly looked up to meet her lavender eyes, so lacking in their usual passion. Slowly she put a hand on his shoulder, left it there for three seconds then let it fall away again.

“Come Tucker,” she said as she moved past him. “I will make some hot chocolate.”

Oo o oO

_9867 bottles of beer on the wall…._

_9867 bottles of beer…_

_Take one down, pass it around…_

_9866 bottles of beer on the wall…_

Oo o oO

Sam carefully gathered the full thermoses for storage. Ghost attacks hadn’t stopped just because Danny… She held her breath and closed her eyes. Her lips pressed together in a thin line. Slowly she breathed out through her nose. She refused to cry anymore.

Ghost attacks hadn’t stopped just because Danny died. They had lost their greatest hero, her best friend. She glanced over at Tucker who was busy at the computer explaining some things to a surprisingly attentive Mr Fenton. She’d never seen the man that attentive when it came to Danny.

She took another deep breath.

The ghosts hadn’t stopped coming, Sam and Tucker couldn’t just stand on the sidelines. They were too entrenched. But the equipment had been impossible to get without… help. Maybe Jazz could have helped, if they’d asked, but she still walked around looking more like a ghost than Danny ever did. And maybe if she was honest with herself Sam was afraid Jazz would suddenly wake back up and blame Sam - It was Sam who made Danny go into the portal, it was her fault it had all begun… Anyway, they’d had to admit to the Fentons that they’d been hunting ghosts.

Mrs Fenton’s struck face when Sam had asked her what she’d thought Danny was doing that would have gotten him so close to Ghostzilla in the first place had made something dark and vindictive curl in pleasure in her chest. Yes they’d been hunting ghosts with Danny underneath their noses, and if that information didn’t make them realize that Danny Phantom was Danny Fenton, then Sam wasn’t about to spoon feed them the truth. If they couldn’t see it, with all the facts staring them in the face; Phantom going missing the same time as Danny, the fact that Danny still looked exactly like himself just with a different color palette when he changed, they simply didn’t deserve to know.

And anyway, a small part of her whispered, would Danny even want them to know? At this point wouldn’t it just bring them more pain to know they’d hunted their son? Danny wouldn’t want that.

She pushed those thoughts away and walked into the storage unit. She carefully put the labelled thermoses on the appropriate shelves. Ever since Mr Fenton had destroyed the portal they’d had to store the ghosts instead. There’d been a short-lived hope that the destruction of the portal would stop the ghost attacks. Clearly it hadn’t. The full thermoses was a testament to that. With the last thermos placed, Sam turned back and walked out of the vault, she was walking over to Tuck and Mr Fenton to see what had managed to hold the man’s attention that long, when she saw it out of her eye. She turned her head curiously, there was an original thermos on a shelf.

Curious she walked over. She’d thought they’d filled all the original thermoses weeks ago. The newer ones had better storage capabilities something that was greatly needed. When she reached out and took the thermos down from the shelf there was a layer of dust and soot on it, how long had it been here? Turning it over in her hand she saw the corner was dented as if it had fallen to the ground at some point, to her annoyance she also noted that it was full, but for some reason no one had labelled it. She frowned and turned to Tucker and Mr. Fenton. One hand holding out the thermos, the other settled on her hip in displeasure.

“Seriously, why is this not labelled? This is an accident waiting to happen, someone grabbing this thinking it’s empty.”

Tucker and Mr Fenton just looked confused, as if they’d never seen the thing before in their lives, but then Mr Fenton’s face fell or darkened, Sam couldn’t really tell.

“Just put it back, Sam,” Mr. Fenton said voice tight, “It’s an older capture, I will label it later.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “As long as you do it.” Knowing Mr Fenton, he wouldn’t get around to doing it, but at least both she and Tucker was aware of the unlabelled thermos now so they wouldn’t accidentally grab it in a hurry.

Oo o oO

_There were noises and colors swirling around him. Was he spinning? He thought so? Needles prickled along all his skin. What skin? He had not felt his skin for… a long time? Maybe… He didn’tknow. There was nothing here, there couldn’t be anything here. But then why did colors bleed and blend and spin and turn, and spark into floaty bubbles that melted on the floor with the sound of a ringing bell or his alarm or drops of water, eternally spiralling into the dark exploding stars?_

Oo o oO

Jazz rushed down the stairs eyes already scanning over the lab for a thermos. There! Right on the shelf next to the stairs. She grabbed the thermos, spun around and ran back up the stairs two at a time. Quickly she turned the thermos around in her hands to be ready. She could hear the screams in the distance as she neared the top of the staircase. Her thumb found the button, but the shape was all wrong, too square and sharp-edged. She came to a stumbling halt in the doorway and looked down baffled at the old dented thermos. She’d thought for sure they didn’t have any left… Her eyes fell on the red occupancy bar and she cursed and spun back around. It was full!

What kind of idiot left a full thermos lying around where people could grab it? She grumbled as she hurried down the stairs. This could have gone horribly wrong. Who knows what kind of horrible ghosts were in there that she could have accidentally released?! It wasn’t even labelled! Oh, who was she kidding she knew what kind of _idiots_ would leave a full thermos lying around and unlabelled. She skidded to a stop in front of the panel for the vault and set her hand flat on it.

It was this kind of unprofessional lack of adherence to lab safety precautions that had made Danny… She gasped and hunched over the panel as it merrily blinked green in approval of her handprint. Tears prickled at her eyes and she wondered when, if ever, she would be able to think of her brother without feeling like someone had reached into her chest, grabbed her heart and teared it out. Rubbing her eyes, she shook her head. Pull yourself together Jazz, she thought angrily and stomped into the now open vault.

She passed the shelves with the rows upon rows of thermoses. It was never gonna end was it? No matter how many ghosts they captured they would keep coming. Since it was unlabelled she thought it best to keep a bit separate from the rest. At the very back of the vault there were a lot of otherwise unused shelving and here at least it would stand out enough, that _maybe_ her mom would see it and notice it wasn’t labelled… a big maybe.

Oo o oO

_It’s pretty probably. For the most part it’s just deeply disturbing. Nothing makes sense anymore. In his more lucid moments he knows he’s read of this; sensory deprivation. When the brain because of lack of input will just make up it’s own, just for something to do. Hallucinations of all the senses; It will drive people to madness. He’s not sure he’s not already mad. Not that anything matters anymore. He strains to gather his thoughts enough to remember the before, when up was up and down was down. Such a thing as the ground existed, gravity pulling him down, grounded, physical, solid. It’s harder and harder. Maybe it is not even worth the effort._

Oo o oO

In Fenton works, down a long staircase, you can find the lab in the basement. This is where ghost weaponry is developed and tested. There on the wall to the right of the staircase is a vault containing shelves upon shelves with new shiny thermoses filled with captured ghosts. In the very back where the shelves have not yet been filled sits a lone thermos. It is smaller, of an older design, dented and dusty.

Nobody has touched it in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was sufficiently gut punching. This will have at least three parts.
> 
> Also I've been drawing Danny Phantom stuff on Tumblr if anyone want to check it out, I'm also Mokulule there :)


End file.
